The spirit of London 2012 revives the Big Society

As a mate and I walked out of the Velodrome last week, reflecting on the place in history reserved for Sir Chris Hoy’s thighs, we bumped into Lib-Dem MP Jeremy Browne. Part of Browne’s role as Minister of State at the Foreign Office involves liaising with foreign dignitaries at London 2012, a tough gig. “The one thing they all point to,” he said, “is this amazing volunteer army.”

It was indeed impossible not to be struck by the volume and quality of volunteers. More than 70,000 civic heroes have provided their labour for free. Not one inch of the Olympic Park seemed safe from a whistle-wielding civilian covered in logos and bristling with patriotism. And it suddenly dawned on me: here was living proof of something we haven’t heard much about recently.

It cannot be stated enough that London 2012 is the best evidence yet that the Big Society exists. But there are two Big Societies: the civic reality on our streets, as evidenced by the past fortnight; and the Government initiative that was the animating spirit of the Tories’ last manifesto. The former is flourishing. The latter is not.

A flight of personnel is proof. Nat Wei, the former McKinsey man who was the Government’s “czar”, left early. One senior insider tells me he was “shunned from the first”. Much more devastating is the loss of Steve Hilton from No 10. Other senior figures are looking for new projects to do.

But this does not imply the Big Society is doomed, despite the Tories’ botched marketing and implementation of it. On the contrary, there are at least two reasons to think it will survive the current impasse. First, the temper of the people is in favour of it, as the success of London 2012 proves. And second, Labour intend to make it their own.

The founding myth of the Big Society was a pretence that it was an original idea. In fact, David Willetts’s seminal pamphlet on Civic Conservatism articulated the Big Society vision. He wrote it in 1995. But David Blunkett’s Scarman Lecture (2003), Labour’s “Together We Can” plan (2005) and Hazel Blear’s “Active Citizens” speech (2006) were all homilies to the Big Society. It is a Labour dream too.

The post-war Labour Party is the offspring of a marriage between two parents: a co-operative, trade union-endorsing mother, who cherished strong relationships; and a Fabian father, who felt government could fix everything. The former venerated society; the latter, the state. In recent years, that marriage has descended into domestic violence, and the brutish father has won.

Ed Miliband came into politics to nurse the mother back to health. If you look at the intellectuals on whom he relies — Stewart Wood, Jon Cruddas, Maurice Glasman, and Australian patriot Tim Soutphommasane — you see men whose mission is strengthening social bonds rather than state apparatus. Far from owning the Big Society, then, the Tories are its temporary custodians in government.

The grand irony is that in Whitehall, the Big Society is enduring an existential crisis, as early champions take flight. But on the streets of this victorious city, and in the emerging field of Milibandism, the work goes on and the cause endures.